Escapement
by HeartOfObsidian
Summary: Escapement es.cape.ment. , N : A mechanism in a time piece used to control movement and provide impulses to a pendulum. Fate sets the cogs turning for dethklok. Prequel to Kause of Deth. Deals with child abuse.
1. The Sin

Note: I was thinking it would weigh KoD down to put something this heavy (did I just write that?) in it. But Toki's pre-background fic-background still needs to be addressed. It's not seamless, but the rest will probably come up in Kause of Deth.

Assume the conversations in English are Norwegian. I doubt anyone wants it written in Norwegian (:

-o-o-o-

When Anja gave birth to her son, she was bitter. She had not married Aslaug willingly and she cared for him even less now. She took a dim view of raising the son to be the father also. In the first few years of his life she regarded Toki like a speck of dirt; an irritant. But over time it became apparent he would not grow into his father's image. Her heart had taken him in and, like a clam, a pearl was made.

As a mother, Anja did not know how to be harsh nor exceptionally loving to her son. It was Aslaug who did most of the interacting with Toki, showing him how to be his version of a "decent man." Luckily it didn't take, which delighted Anja, but she had given up on smiling years ago. It was Anja who fed Toki, bathed him, clothed him, provided subdued reassurance when he was scolded. And it was Anja, coming to awaken her son, that discovered _him_ discovering _himself_.

The clearly adult desire on Toki's young face coupled with the primal grunts he made while stroking himself drove a cold fear into her. Desire had prompted Aslaug to take a wife, and that desire had translated to torture for Anja. She had hoped against nature that her son would eschew sex, not because of pious duty, but because of decency.

Anja stepped away from his door. She was losing him, both to age and hormones. Inevitable though it was, she was not ready for her son to grow up. She was even less ready for Aslaug to teach him that the right thing was to put off his lust until he could condemn a young woman to a life of servitude and violation in the name of holy matrimony. It was with this reason Anja justified the unthinkable. She would turn to Aslaug for discipline.


	2. The Task

Speech in Toki's house was a rarity. Once he had learned to behave and do his chores thoroughly – and with the lash to enforce his father's requirements, he'd learned quickly – words became few and far between. If he needed not direction, correction, or punishment, his days passed in silence. His mother might soften her gaze, but talking to Toki had been forbidden for her since he could speak. Women were not to instruct their sons in the Wartooth family.

Though it was at times lonely, Toki had come to appreciate silence. Silence was safe. This was why, one bright night, Toki was shocked to be jarred from sleep by his mother's voice. "Boy," she hissed urgently, "Wake up!"

"Mother!" He wiped the sleep from his eyes and quickly became aware of his penis growing rigid. Toki had not expected her presence or her voice. He sat up in bed turning his thighs away from her so she wouldn't see."Is something wrong?"

"Yes," Anja replied sternly, ignoring the knot in her throat. She was already sorry for what was to happen, but she hoped that whatever blood was shed, it would be for the greater good in the end. She pushed aside her conflicted feelings and jerked the covers from her son's bed. "This! This is unacceptable!"

"What is?" Toki tried to ignore his erection, hoping his mother would follow suit.

Anja looked over her son's body with a scathing glare but she had said too much already. She grabbed him by the wrist and led him downstairs to where his father was waiting. Toki was grateful that any remnants of his arousal had diminished by the time he stood before the reverend.

Dinner was still on the table. In actuality, Toki had not been asleep long. Toki always ate dinner alone, before his parents, and then was dismissed to his room. Anja had waited until Aslaug had eaten and Toki had long been asleep before broaching the subject. In favor of helping him prepare the boy's lesson, Aslaug had not bade his wife to clear the table.

Aslaug rose silently and stepped outside. After a few moments he returned, whip in hand, and Anja's physical cues urged Toki to follow. Toki was afraid and he eyed his father's coiled whip as it swung freely in his hand, but follow he did, far up the mountain behind the Wartooth cottage. Outside spring was still clinging to the chill of winter, and for a boy in his pajamas and bare feet it was still far too cold. Toki hoped, not unrealistically for this time of year in the land of the midnight sun, that the sun would not be long in rising again.

Their trek ended in the shadow of a wide mountain crag where the herds would sleep and by that time Toki was too miserable to care how many lashes he'd receive, or why. In the nook of the mountain he knew a bell was strung from a high post to call any stragglers straying from the herd. Except the heavy brass bell was on the ground and the thick rope that bore it was swaying freely in the wind.

"This bell will be back on it's rope by morning or I will be very disappointed." Without another word, Aslaug descended the path they had just traveled, leaving Toki alone with his task. But Toki didn't need words to understand perfectly the repercussions of disappointing his father. He had scars to remind him.

The boy was able. Even in his eleven year old body, a strong definition of muscle mapped his torso, arms, and legs. But the bell was cumbersome, and the severed rope dangled too high. Toki could climb the post until he had splinters, but not if he was carrying the bell. He could barely get his arms around it in the first place and as such he couldn't hoist the bell to the rope, either.

Toki toiled until his energy stores were depleted, and lay shivering against a rock at the base of the mountain. He thought hard and long about why he was doing this. Finding no clear answer, he resigned himself to the whip long before daybreak.


	3. The Lesson

Toki did not string the bell that night, but neither did he receive any lashing from his father's whip when Aslaug returned in the morning. The task was not meant to be completed and the whip itself not Toki's punishment but an alternative should Toki not justly -- nay, eagerly -- punish himself. That was the worst thing about his father's brand of discipline. It wasn't enough to have the boy understand the reason for his punishment, but love the punishment as well.

Under his father's direction, Toki climbed the rope again and again until his raw palms stained it red. All the while he was lectured on the sins of abusing oneself. Toki swore he'd never touch himself again but Aslaug was determined to make it impossible. It was to be his hands at the rope, or the lash at his feet. Touching anything was going to be unpleasant for Toki for a very long while.

Tired and aching after hours of carrying his own body weight, Toki fell to the ground mid-climb. He lie there drenched in sweat, sleep-deprived and utterly spent. He couldn't feel his hands anymore, the sharp alien sensation of gripping a rope with the cracked and bloody skin of his palms had dulled to a numb, tooth-gritting agony. In contrast, he was acutely aware of the space in his stomach, but he was well past hunger; he felt pure sick.

"What have you learned?" Aslaug asked him.

Toki's tongue felt foreign in his mouth. Dry and grainy it stuck to his palate as he frantically willed himself speak. His father's lectures had been mostly about the evils of pleasure, the purpose of hands, and the value of hard work. But Toki couldn't string the words together fast enough.

Toki curled immediately against Aslaug's boot as it was thrust repeatedly into Toki's belly. Aslaug ignored Toki's gasps and cries, for he found great purpose in getting physical with his son. He received well-learned lessons that way from his father, as did his father before him. Words coupled with pain made them so much harder to forget. Only when Toki began to sputter, spewing blood onto the dirty mountain snow, did the beating desist.

"What have you learned?" Aslaug repeated testily.

Toki's mouth was slick with blood the taste of warm pennies and he felt it rolling thickly down his chin. He scrambled onto his hands and knees quickly realizing his mistake. His hands felt like fire in the snow and Toki nearly collapsed again. He balanced on his elbows and spoke hurriedly into the ground.

Aslaug did not like to repeat himself and was not going to another time. His hand dove into the matted brown tendrils of Toki's hair and took hold at the base of his neck. With another tug, Aslaug raised Toki's blood-smeared face to his own.

Toki whispered shakily, just loud enough for his father's ears, "Hands are for work, not pleasure."

Aslaug grinned broadly at his boy, proud. It was the first smile Toki could ever remember from his father. Aslaug released his hair and pulled him up by the crooks of his arms. He steadied Toki, careful to avoid his hands, as they began their walk down the mountain.

Back at the house, Anja dropped her sewing when Aslaug escorted Toki inside and sat him down at the table. Toki's eyes were glassy, or rather, what she could see through his hair was. He tried to smile feebly at her to assure her he was alright, but at that moment blood swelled in his mouth and he couldn't contain it. Bright red and watered down with saliva it coursed down his chin, a very grisly waterfall.

Aslaug said nothing, but he placed a plate in front of Toki and grimaced as she assessed the state of him. Anja knew she was to provide him food and clean him up. She watched her husband walk to the door in stony silence, but before he opened it, he set Toki's work boots out. Anja was infuriated, Toki was clearly in no condition to be working.

"Aslaug! He hasn't slept, or eaten, and look at him! You will _kill _him!"

"There are donkeys to geld," he said simply. That was not a one-man job. Hot tears spilled onto Toki's cheeks because he knew he'd be holding the ropes.

"Aslaug, you can't--"

Aslaug rounded on Anja and hit her hard, open-palmed. "I am the head of his family. Do not tell me what I cannot do. Clean him up."

Anja didn't even dare touch her flushed cheek in his presence. She stared at the floor until Aslaug exited and then watched out the window as he disappeared into the barn. When he was cleanly out of sight, she gripped Toki's hand in earnest, unaware of how badly they were injured. Toki cried out and turned over his chair.

She righted him quickly and looked at his raw hands. "I'm sorry," she said, apologizing for more than he would know.

Anja set about cleaning and bandaging Toki, letting him doze while she did so. He didn't really fall asleep, the lukewarm water felt good on his dirty face but his mother scrubbed a little too hard in places where the blood had dried. When he was clean Anja dressed him too, as she had done when he was a toddler. She prepared a simple lunch then woke him as gently as she could, spooning some of the hot meal into his mouth.

Toki groaned appreciatively, not unlike the sounds that had caused her initial alarm and set all this mess in motion. This time Anja didn't care in the least.

Just yesterday she had prayed he could be a child again. Today she knew he never would be. She caught stray potato on his lip with the spoon and pushed down her guilt over the circumstance in which she had been momentarily granted this frivolous, impossible wish. She wasn't sure when he had started growing up or when she had stopped doing these motherly things for him, but she knew for certain this would be the last time. She wouldn't rush.


	4. The Lie

It would be days before the fever hit. Toki's body would fight a losing battle, trying to burn out the infection from inadvertently working bacteria into his wounds. It would be longer still before he was taken to the hospital in nearby Lillehammer for treatment of the necrotizing flesh of his hands.

Doctors caught the sepsis before it killed him, dosing him with a highly aggressive treatment. He was monitored closely until his recovery and given a clean bill of health upon discharge. But he wasn't discharged home. When he finally went home it was with a social worker to gather his things.

The three of them were drab dots against the backdrop of the snowy mountains around their home. Aslaug stood further back and only Anja and Toki attempted a formal goodbye. The social worker waited in the car, not out of respect for a wrecked family's last words, but because the whole thing made her ill.

"I'll come back for you," Toki promised his mother, breaking the silence. He fought his sadness, offering a small, gap toothed smile.

Anja was done crying for the boy. She was done trying to piece together new ways for their lives to unravel around this mess and weave together again far away from their abandoned village. Far away from Aslaug. In her haste to keep her son – with her, young, innocent, forever -- she had done the most to push him away. The damage was already done.

As far as she was concerned, her son had died of his infection. There was comfort in the lie; she could keep him like this always then. Young and innocent. Forever. In true Wartooth fashion, Anja had made up her mind and abandoned all else. But she held a saving grace inside in the spaces of her heart that her son previously occupied. She would not see him perpetuate his father's evil. That was something she could cling to.

Anja gave Toki the tiniest smile in return and gathered her wits. She struck her son then, as hard as her nerve would allow. His eyes flew open in shock as the sting of her slap reddened his cheek. Any evidence of her smile was gone and she hoped he could read the message on her weathered face. _Don't ever come back here._


End file.
